The 19th day of the fifth month of the year of the Camellia

THERE ARE SWANS, AND THEN THERE SWANS

Betchya didn't know that!

Some years ago (I am better at remembering that---than why I just walked into a room looking for something), whilst photographing different swan critters, I ran aground of the ones in the following photos.  When I was only fifteen years old, we spent summers in Rock Hall, MD.  What a place for kid to grow up.  Took our shoes off in June and didn't put them back on till September.  If we kids needed money, we went to a place on the bay called Eastern Neck Island.  I had a fourteen foot wooden runabout with a 25 horsepower motor on it.  We took that boat all over that bay----wonder we didn't kill ourselves.  We would go to the flats around Eastern Neck to wade with dip nets to catch crabs.  The water was less than waist deep and dip nets with long handles were or trap of choice.  Get a bushell of hard crabs and a few dozen soft crabs and we had our income for the week.

Oh and FYI, these are not swans!

We would then take the money we made from crabbing and then play the pin-ball machines at local restaurants.  These machines in Maryland paid money back for games won.  Kids will be kids.  We could take a five dollar investment and run up a couple thousand games for which we got a nickel each.  A couple of days like this we had our spending money.  Talk about a work ethic----we had it all.

It used to be, that great numbers of Tundra Swans, made long migrations from Northern Canada and even Alaska to spend the winter where I lived in Maryland.  In fact there are websites which track their progress every year from one feeding and resting area to the next along the migration routes.  These big birds are simply majestic.  Often as many as five thousand would winter over on the Chesapeake Bay around Eastern Neck Island, just south of Rock Hall, MD.  It was quite a site.

  Their wings do whistle when they fly overhead, although this species is not the whistling swans of that name.  These are the Tundras, and they are identified easily by their black bill.

Eastern neck was at one time winter home to as many as five thousand of these birds, but they have moved south to lower Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina as the bay grasses have been depleted in this area.

Below an adult tundra and a cygnet photographed on Assateague Island in Virginia.  Above is Eastern Neck in Winter.

Part of the reason the wintering spots in the Chesapeake have moved south is  due to the growth in the population of the Mute swans.  These critters, with the orange bills, feed on the same bay grasses as the tundra.  But unlike the tundra and Canada geese, they pull the entire plant from the bay bottom and thus destroy their own feed source in the process.  States have taken some drastic measures in recent years to limit the populations of Mutes.

The tundras winter over but breed in Canada and Alaska.  Here, the Mute will breed and raise their family on the bay and other pieces of convenient water, and thus increasing the resident numbers. 

This family of mutes above was photographed in southern Maryland around Deal Island.

No matter which family of swans we see, they are still a majestic and beautiful bird. 

A mute swan takes off from the Choptank River in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay area.

Now let's see-----black bill=Tundra-----orange bill=Mute.  Easy to remember for the written test next week.